Chapter 98

Then I felt a hand in my hair. I was sleeping and yet I was awake. I could sense Myles so near. I tried to raise my hand to touch him or let him know I was listening, but nothing of me would cooperate. He was silent for a long time, caressing my hair. “You never…hit your son,” he finally said, in a low, almost inaudible voice. Was he talking to me? “You never stormed into his room at night, drunk, crazy, yelling, spitting words—hateful fucking words—never threw him out of the house in winter when he was only wearing his pyjama pants and nothing else, and he was cold and humiliated and had to ask the neighbors for a blanket but no one wanted to open the door.” Myles stopped and his breath hitched. “You never…you never held his arm down on the table…”

“Myles.” His words sobered me up. I grabbed the nape of his hair, pulling him over me.

“You never did any of that,” he said, into my shoulder. “You never hurt him that way.”